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Dustin Block

@dustinblock.bsky.social

Journalism, product, AI and miscellenia. I see the light at the end of the tunnel now. Someone please tell me it's not a train. -Cracker

336 Followers  |  839 Following  |  64 Posts  |  Joined: 21.11.2023
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Posts by Dustin Block (@dustinblock.bsky.social)

Tullycraft: No Tic, All Tac
YouTube video by Stella Svartur Tullycraft: No Tic, All Tac

If you like Tullycraft, check out this fan video the band shared today. youtu.be/SrG_XE7Ol5g?...

23.01.2026 19:57 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Environmental News & Newsroom Collaboration Curated environmental journalism from independent nonprofit newsrooms featuring climate reporting, public lands coverage, and collaboration opportunities.

NewsCompass.media is a tool I've been working on to suggest potential collaborations around environmental and wildlife news. Would love some people to take a look.

02.01.2026 16:27 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
After police used Flock cameras to accuse a Denver woman of theft, she had to prove her own innocence Chrisanna Elser spent days collecting evidence, from apps on her phone to dashcam footage in her vehicle, to prove her whereabouts

As Flock's etwork grows, so do the concerns over mass surveillance. Like the woman in this story who had to use her own dashboard camera to prove her innocence.

Reporting by @coloradosun.com

coloradosun.com/2025/10/28/f...

29.10.2025 14:04 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Pour Over Pal

I tried out Google AI Studio's new vibe coding option. Here's the β˜• Pour Over Pal: pour-over-pal-734205236203.us-west1.run.app #coffee

27.10.2025 15:20 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I can't go back to the page gap.

10.10.2025 15:07 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Pageless format should be the default in Google Docs.

10.10.2025 13:02 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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The Wilderness Downtown Check out Arcade Fire's new interactive HTML5 music experience, β€œThe Wilderness Downtown”.

It's been 15 years since Arcade Fire dropped their Google Maps video for The Wilderness Downtown. www.thewildernessdowntown.com

17.09.2025 15:12 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

A sweet old lady wrote me to ask if I would help her out by signing off Jeopardy! every night saying "Don't forget your night medicine, my friends." I am actively considering this.

15.08.2025 18:25 β€” πŸ‘ 12104    πŸ” 854    πŸ’¬ 402    πŸ“Œ 78

Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you:

Our funding depends on usage.

So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.

12.08.2025 14:05 β€” πŸ‘ 13596    πŸ” 5946    πŸ’¬ 209    πŸ“Œ 346

With the new GPT-5 I keep adding the phrase "think hard" to try and get it to default to the new model. If I think hard about it, I'm the one being prompted.

12.08.2025 19:48 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Confession time: I've been working on a secret side project at Vox Media for the past 18 months and it launched yesterday

06.08.2025 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 617    πŸ” 48    πŸ’¬ 30    πŸ“Œ 47

Census of coffee mugs on my desk: 5.

10.07.2025 16:55 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Karate Kid: Legends is perfect.

22.06.2025 11:11 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Why people are burning Waymos + Anti-ICE Labubu, menswear guy milkshake duck, All In pod's existential crisis, a reputation marketplace, SF's salad war, a BlackBerry resurgence, NYC's dating economy and why Christians love AI slop

πŸ‘οΈβ€πŸ—¨οΈ πŸŽ₯

open.substack.com/pub/taylorlo...

09.06.2025 16:41 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Elon Musk's Grok AI Won't Stop Talking About 'White Genocide' Grok has posted about South African apartheid and 'white genocide' hundreds of times in replies to users about unrelated topics

Grok: "Am I giving Elon too much credit here?"

www.usermag.co/p/elon-musks...

16.05.2025 13:48 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Update: After Reddit support sent me two emails saying they couldn't help, Reddit Security wrote and helped me reset the pw. All fixed. If this happens to you, it's possible they'll come through.

09.05.2025 02:44 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Unlikely, but who knows.

08.05.2025 20:25 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Got an email today saying I was enrolled in Reddit 2FA, even though I never signed up. It said to contact them immediately if I didn't enroll, but just got a message back saying there's nothing they can do. Sharing for anyone with a similar experience.

08.05.2025 15:23 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Before Sunrise

05.05.2025 15:41 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Check out the Rural News Network. There's hope.

05.05.2025 12:39 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Inside Reuters’ AI playbook: Why Jane Barrett says journalism can’t afford to sit this one out AI is rewriting the rules of content, but who’s writing the rules for AI in newsrooms?

β€œWe train our journalists… to get the context right, to get the nuance right, the β€˜so what?’, the β€˜yes, but’, the β€˜what don’t we know?’.

β€œThose are core tenants of journalism.

β€œAnd those are not core tenants built into any constitution of any AI model…”

mediacopilot.substack.com/p/inside-reu...

04.05.2025 14:08 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

the thing I hate most about that rfk quote is that autistic lives have value and worth and beauty and dignity whether they are able to do the things other people do or not. no one is defined by ability or lack thereof and to frame divergence as lack is monster stuff, utterly godless

19.04.2025 00:05 β€” πŸ‘ 16585    πŸ” 3548    πŸ’¬ 318    πŸ“Œ 111
The White House official β€” who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the new program β€” said those who were moved into the Social Security database this week all have ties to terrorist activity or criminal records. The official did not provide evidence of the alleged crimes or terrorist ties but said some are included on the FBI’s terror watch list.

The White House official β€” who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the new program β€” said those who were moved into the Social Security database this week all have ties to terrorist activity or criminal records. The official did not provide evidence of the alleged crimes or terrorist ties but said some are included on the FBI’s terror watch list.

You’re not supposed to grant anonymity to liars. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

10.04.2025 23:28 β€” πŸ‘ 1897    πŸ” 341    πŸ’¬ 60    πŸ“Œ 51

The replies.

09.04.2025 17:18 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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U.S. says it is now monitoring immigrants' social media for antisemitism Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

09.04.2025 15:10 β€” πŸ‘ 8017    πŸ” 3951    πŸ’¬ 3416    πŸ“Œ 2366
Screenshot of a post from James Surowiecki: 

Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did.

Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us
are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate
Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.

It's also important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff.

A graph below shows the figures cited.

Screenshot of a post from James Surowiecki: Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is. It's also important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff. A graph below shows the figures cited.

Screenshot of a post from Krishnan Rohit:

This might be the first large-scale application of Al technology to geopolitics.. 40, 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily.

Contained within his post are multiple screenshots of those AI results.

Screenshot of a post from Krishnan Rohit: This might be the first large-scale application of Al technology to geopolitics.. 40, 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily. Contained within his post are multiple screenshots of those AI results.

Well this is fun. It looks very much like Trump’s team asked AI β€œhow to easily apply tariffs”, and based their numbers on the results - despite those results in no way corresponding to reality, economics or how tariffs work.

By fun I mean horrifying.

03.04.2025 06:45 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
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Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy? Trump’s tariffs are a disaster. His policy process is worse.

"But it may be even worse than that. The Trump formula is apparently what you get if you ask ChatGPT and other AI models to make tariff policy."

open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

03.04.2025 13:15 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0